


with perfect grace

by Hymn



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Capture, F/M, M/M, Multi, Torture, but i might have missed some, but like, i tried to get rid of it, pls let me know if i missed a tag or something, post kh2, potentially problematic languge, sora's complete and overwhelming faith in his partners, sorry - Freeform, sweet angst??, uugghhhhh these guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-16
Updated: 2007-07-16
Packaged: 2019-05-08 03:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14685242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: “Why do you fight me?” she asked.“I have two very good reasons,” Sora said, smiling wide enough in the darkness that the scab on his lip cracked, and started to bleed sluggishly again.





	with perfect grace

**Author's Note:**

> for springkink, Kingdom Hearts 2, Sora/Riku/Kairi: Trust and Vows - "In all the darkness, I feel like letting go. If all of the strength, if all of the courage, come lift me from this place."

It was very dark, wherever he was. Dark, and cold, and sometimes there were footsteps that came towards him, and Sora set his jaw and narrowed his gaze out into the middle distance, and gave his tormenter nothing but grunts or hissed curses or laughter in place of tears. The footsteps always left him, even and clinical as they walked away, leaving Sora in a world that was now dark, and cold, as always, but also hurting. 

And one day a woman came instead, with soft hands and perfumed words, exuding a sickly sweetness, like decaying roses. Sora didn’t know how long he’d been there, or how long he would remain; he knew that this was the person behind the war, the instigator of so many deaths, and he ached that he couldn’t fight, that he was caught and trapped and helpless and unable to end her, to end the pain so many were in. He couldn’t, though. He could only endure.

“Why do you fight me?” she asked.

“I have two very good reasons,” Sora said, smiling wide enough in the darkness that the scab on his lip cracked, and started to bleed sluggishly again. “And, no - it’s not because you’re beating the shit out of me on a regular basis so I kind of have to stand up to you on _principle_ , or even that you’re just plain _mean_ , lady. Why do you even bother to ask?”

“I could give you anything.”

“No, no you couldn’t.” Sora tilted his head back, resting in his manacles, the steel frozen and cold, his fingers a mangled mess so that he can’t call his keyblades, no matter how much he strained. He was tired, exhausted, and weary of this. He didn’t no how long it would take for the lady to go, to leave him alone with his pain and his darkness and his cold. Didn’t know how long it would take until his torment ended, until Riku and Kairi, his two very good reasons, came to his aid.

All he could do was wait, and so he would.

“Yes,” the lady said, with absolute certainty. “I could. I could give you _anything_.”

And Sora thought: _you couldn’t give me the sunlight on waves in your laughter; you couldn’t give me hands as rough and scarred as my own, hands that have saved my life half a dozen times, and lifted me up from who I could have been, to who I am now; you couldn’t give me a dark pain to quietly share the burden of; you couldn’t give me the other two pieces of my soul. You couldn’t give those to me, but Kairi can, and Riku can._

When all Sora did was grin, distantly amused, quietly disgusted with her offer; when all he did was stay stoic through the lady’s offer, a sweet soft light in his electric-blue eyes that had nothing to do with her and what she could give, the lady stiffened. 

She stepped back, and Sora was not sorry for her to go, with her delicate, waifish body dressed in gauzy silks. Maybe if she had been all hard, lean muscle, bold curves or sharp straight lines, it would have been a slightly different matter, in the dark, with only his memory to supply him with a vision to fit the body. As it was, she could never compare.

She said, “Why do you insist on making this difficult? It would be so much easier to surrender.”

It made Sora laugh, laugh so hard he thought he was going to be sick, tears at his eyes, his body aching and broken and battered and curling up as far as his cold, cold manacles would let him, his savaged hands twitching and spasming with the force of it. “Oh, oh, babe,” he said, and this time his voice was a hard glitter, like stars shining across dark metal, and his head was up, tilted proudly, jaw jutting stubbornly.

He hoped the lady could look into his eyes and see how far from breaking he really was.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You can’t understand what it’s like, to have traveled across worlds on the barest glimmer of a hope, a hope that you can find the right path in a million others, and when you find it, run reckless down it, despite the darkness, and the deadliest possibilities, because you know that that is the path that will lead you to the very reasons why your lungs expand and your heart beats and your body moves and your soul aches and endures and moves forward, on, if just for the chance of continuing _with_ them, with them at your side, through the truest, deepest, most ferocious love you’ve ever known.

“Even when I was just a fucking kid, it had its grip on me, shook me down to my skeleton and made me rebuild myself so as to be worthy, because I promised them. I promised, and I don’t break my promises, lady. This is nothing compared to that. Nothing compared to life without them.”

Sora grinned, a touch rueful, because there had been a day when he’d thought about his future and seen a normal house in a normal neighborhood on Destiny Islands, working a normal job, married to a normal wife with normal kids. He hadn’t necessarily wanted it, but he’d seen it, and expected it.

How was he supposed to have known that Kairi and Riku would make a claim on him, would take the pieces of his heart and soul and mind and everything and anything that could possibly make up him, make up _Sora_ , and changed his destiny just by loving him, by Sora loving them more than he had ever imagined was possible. 

“We promised we’d always find each other,” Sora told the lady gently, “we promised we’d never give up on each other. And if I just surrendered, if I just did what you wanted, that would be giving up on them, on myself. That would be taking their trust and throwing it away, because they’re trusting me to hang on, you know? Trusting me to wait for them, to believe in them.”

The lady was very still, as if she was facing down some great threat that she did not know, could not recognize, and if she moved it might notice, and she did not want it to notice, did not want it to comprehend the depth of her ignorance; she did not want it to see her empty and wanting, but Sora saw it anyway, and rejoiced, because he felt like he was so full of love most of the time that it made his heart hurt, and that was so, so much better than the empty broken sadness of the lady’s cold, dead world.

“I believe in them,” Sora said, “I trust them. They’ll come save me, or I might die before that. But I won’t give up on them. I won’t. I _can’t_.”

Slowly, the lady gathered herself, and then moved, as if waking from a dream, and she straightened, and Sora somehow felt her get her bearings, and then her sweet, dead voice was saying, “Then you have made your own grave.”

Sora shrugged as best he could, calm, peaceful. “All right. It could be worse.” At least to the end, his heart would be full with them, with Riku and Kairi and the glory of their love and the brilliance of being true to them, as he ever has been. _Yeah_ , he thought with a soft, sweet smile. _I can definitely work with that._


End file.
